Teach Soap

So browsing the website where i buy my soap making ingredients.
As i'm very new to cold process soap making i'm still learning what works with what and whats best for what
type of skin, etc..

Is mango butter really unsaponifiable?
http://www.justasoap.co.uk/catalog/mang ... p-195.html

Not that it really matters as i suppose this would count as a superfat?!
And I'm not actually working on superfatted soaps at the moment,
I'm giving myself the time to do unsuperfatted soaps, just to get my head round cp soap and a few batches under my
belt before i seek further into superfatted cp soaps.

But i thought that all butters were capable of being turned into soap via cp soap method!!

What other ingredients are like this?

The more unrefined the butter, the more usaponifiables it has. Always, always make soap with superfat. And just so you know, there is no need to add any butter or oil at trace. Lye is still very active at this point and it will take whatever it wants. There is no guarantee that any particular oil or butter will end up as your superfat. Unsuperfatted soaps are harsh, very drying and could burn your skin.

Add all your oils and butters in soap calc and calculate your superfat at LEAST 5%. I do a 7% superfat as I find anything lower drying for my skin.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Please don't give out the un-superfatted soaps to your friends and family. Those soaps could do some serious damage, especially if it gets in the eyes or the private regions. Hopefully they are just small batches. I would either rebatch with extra oil or butter added or bin them.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

If you used the soap calc site and didn't change the defaults then it would automatically go to a 5% super fat. If that is the case you're okay. If you did change the 5 to a 0 then you do indeed have a soap that is not super fatted and can be lye heavy and you will want to do like Irena said and rebatch or toss.

_________________
Lisa
“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul” ~ Yiddish proverb

Super fatting leaves room for errors and actually make for a nicer more luxurious bar. You can rebatch. It's not hard to do.

_________________
Lisa
“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul” ~ Yiddish proverb

Ditto what has been said: rebatching is not that hard. If you like the rustic look, you can make some really nice soaps that way. Plus - soap balls!!!!

The batches you made might be OK. The basic problem with all recipes is that unless we go to the lengths of actually testing and calculating the real SAP values of our ingredients, the figures we use are only an average. For instance an oil with a SAP value of 195 might be actually 190 or 200 depending on climatic conditions etc while growing. Using a superfat percentage should ensure safety come what may.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.